Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Just returned from a weekend with T and D who live in Kingston, near Woodstock. Friday night, after dinner at an Italian restaurant called Mint, we drove into Rhinebeck to Upstate Cinemas to watch "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." A good-fun, feel-good movie, it followed a group of British retirees who traveled to India to stay at the eponymous hotel. The ensemble acting was good though the roles hardly stretched the talents of Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith and Dev Patel. India was seen very much through the eyes of these Britishers (a recent widow, a former civil servant, a retired High Court judge, an ex-governess), but it was to the credit of the firm, directed by John Madden, that it fleshed out a few Indian characters such as Dev Patel's hapless romantic. The dialogue was sharp, and the plot provided a couple of surprises ("twist" is too strong a word). On Saturday, after eating lunch and walking about in Rhinebeck, which boasts the ...

Richard Eyre directed the BBC TV production of Chekov's "The Cherry Orchard" (1981). I watched it over three nights, straining to hear the often-muffled sound. The poor sound might have to do with the age of the DVD. Using a version written by Trevor Griffiths, the production seemed overly English. As Madame Ranevsky, Judi Dench was affecting in certain scenes, as when she debated with herself whether to return to her Parisian lover, but was otherwise unconvincing as a Russian aristocrat who had to sell her family estate, including the famous cherry orchard. More likely was the performance of Bill Paterson as Lopakhin, the eventual buyer of the estate. The character was the richest of the lot. Upwardly mobile, commercially-minded, he gloried in the purchase of the land on which his father had worked as a serf. Anton Lesser was also very fine as the "eternal" student Peter Trofimov. * Over the last two weekends we watched two gay movies about adopting a child...

The Merchant-Ivory film is a travesty of Forster's novel. I know, I know, we are all supposed to be viewers sophisticated enough to know a film adaptation is never the book. But I am not objecting to the liberties the film takes with the book's plot. Nor am I protesting the irreconcilable features of two very different media. What bothers me is that the film exorcises the spirit of the novel. It takes what is an existential question wrapped in social comedy, and turns it inside out, into a comedy of manners decorated with philosophy, along with lavish sets, costumes and music. This is most clearly seen in the character of George Emerson. When we first see him in the film, he is playing with his food, forming a question mark with it, and then showing the plate, with a roguish smile, to Lucy Honeychurch. His action is not in the novel. It slights the despair the young man feels in the novel, a despair born out of a sense that things in the world do not hang together. The quest...